The Distillation

“People in the Bible Belt say, ‘You’re using the Bible to promote drugs,'” she said, drawing out the word “drugs” for emphasis. Decker disagrees. “We’re using the Bible to promote what God gave us. We say that God made the perfect medicine. Man is the one that made it illegal.”

Genesis 1:29, which Decker formed in 2010, is named after a Bible verse that’s oft-repeated by Christians in favor of medical marijuana: "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”... The president of the organization that represents the largest evangelical group in the US won’t budge on calling marijuana a sin. “The scripture speaks against drunkenness, and marijuana is a mind-altering substance with the purpose of achieving, essentially, what the Bible would describe as drunkenness,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I have never taken drugs other than alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and medicinal drugs. Of these, I have for many years not taken the two former. I think it is inimical to a good life to be dependent for pleasure and personal fulfilment on substances which gloss or distort reality and interfere with rationality; and yet I believe that heroin, cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and cognates of these should be legal and available in exactly the same way as nicotine and alcohol.

The classic example is Prohibition in the USA during the 1920s. (The hysteria over alcohol extended to other drugs; heroin was made illegal in the USA in 1924, on the basis of poor research on its health risks and its alleged propensity to cause insanity and criminal behaviour.) Prohibition created a huge criminal industry. The end of Prohibition did not result in a frenzy of drinking, but did leave a much-enhanced crime problem, because the criminals turned to substances which remained illegal, and supplied them instead. Crime destabilises society. Gangland rivalry, the use of criminal organisations to launder money, to fund terrorism and gun-running, to finance the trafficking of women and to buy political and judicial influence all destabilise the conditions for a good society far beyond such problems as could be created by private individuals' use of drugs. If drugs were legally and safely available through chemist shops, and if their use was governed by the same provisions as govern alcohol purchase and consumption, the main platform for organised crime would be removed, and thereby one large obstacle to the welfare of society. It would also remove much petty crime, through which many users fund their habit. If addiction to drugs were treated as a medical rather than criminal matter, so that addicts could get safe, regular supplies on prescription, the crime rate would drop dramatically, as argued recently by certain police chiefs.

Their research is timely. Thousands of people from around the world travel to the Amazon every year to drink ayahuasca for mental health conditions including alcoholism, depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, and drug addiction.

Standish, a professor at the Bastyr University Research Institute in Seattle, is one of several scientists hoping more governments around the world will begin approving research into the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca in the next year. Neuroscientist Jessica Nielson at the University of California-San Francisco plans to submit protocol this month to the FDA for a study on ayahuasca as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. In the next three months, Jordi Riba, a researcher at the Sant Pau Institute of Biomedical Research in Barcelona, plans to seek approval from the Spanish government for his own study into ayahuasca as a PTSD treatment. If he succeeds, it will be the first trial in Europe looking at the brew’s therapeutic potential.

She plans to give 20 participants low doses of LSD or a placebo, and scanning their brains while they perform a range of cognitive tasks.

Before it was made illegal in 1968, Ms Feilding would take LSD to boost her creativity, and even found that her performace in the ancient Chinese game of Go, improved. Ms Feilding said: ‘I found that if I was on LSD and my opponent wasn’t, I won more games. ‘For me that was a very clear indication that it improves cognitive function, particularly a kind of intuitive pattern recognition.’

​We believe people who use psychedelics shouldn’t be vulnerable to criminal punishment—and we want to build a world where legal psychedelics make sense... it’s incumbent upon people who care about psychedelics to work toward ending the criminalization of people who use them outside of medical contexts, while also advocating for psychedelic-assisted therapy research.

This legacy continues today, with thousands of people every year getting handcuffed, arrested, branded for life as criminals, and serving time behind bars simply for using or possessing a psychedelic substance. These people are more likely to be young, non-white, and socioeconomically marginalized than most other people who use psychedelics.

“My order is shoot to kill you. I don’t care about human rights, you better believe me.”​Duterte has viciously defended his “drug war” as a success, and accused the most prominent opponent of the killings ― Philippine Senator Leila de Lima ― of being involved in the drug trade herself. Duterte has also taken aim at rights groups, and vowed to continue his bloody anti-drug campaign until 2022. In less that a year, at least 7,000 people have died in Duterte’s “drug war.” Many of the killings are carried out extrajudicially by vigilantes who Duterte has encouraged to kill drug dealers and users.

This is the federal Department of Health and Human Services talking, in terms that could not possibly be more clear: So far, there’s nothing to suggest that legalization is leading to increased teen use.

Hickenlooper is repeating what state public officials have said, citing state data that shows no rise in teen use. It’s inconvenient for the cops, district attorneys and the Kevin Sabets of the world, but federal public health officials—you know, the people whose official line is that cannabis is highly addictive and has no medical value—are with Hickenlooper.

Nearly all of Trudeau’s talking points on legalization stressed public safety as the legislation’s driving principle.

Trudeau told the audience that Canada learned a lot from legal-cannabis states in the US, which may be part of the reason he’s pledged to leave the country’s medical cannabis program untouched, at least for the time being.

Loblaw Co. and its various subsidiaries employ nearly 200,000 Canadians. The announcement represents the largest corporate acceptance of medical cannabis in North America.

In fact, an enormously symbolic change occurred just last week. Loblaw Companies, which owns the supermarket chain Loblaws and the drug store chain Shoppers Drug Mart, announced that employee benefit plans would include coverage for medical marijuana.

ECfES

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